Our culture war is primarily against Secularism's unholy trinity (Darwin, Freud and Marx) and any and all opposing cultures who challenge us.

Negative Social & Moral Effects flowing fromDarwin, Freud and Marx:

The real question today is, do we have a culture war or a new culture?
Without question, we have a new morality here, a new way of determining
right and wrong, and the Decalogue has nothing at all to do with it.

America is recognized, from her birth, to be a "Western" nation. At the core of Western Civilization and this thing called Western Culture is Judeo-Christian ethos, morality, traditions and customs.

To the Marxist, that which is good for the leviathan state is right, and that which is against the leviathan state is wrong. Period.

To the neo-socialist, whatever is good for the Global Village, or
the company, or the conglomerate, or the “team,” or the Party, is
right, and whatever is against it is wrong.

To the Darwinist, that which promotes or supports evolutionary theory is right, and that which opposes or attacks it is wrong.

To the Freudian, that which supports the idea of “sexual freedom,” and the elimination of sexual inhibitions and any sense of guilt, is right, and that which opposes them is wrong.

There are all sorts of little sub-divisions beneath these, because once secularism
has eliminated spirituality, something must replace it as a guide, or
set of sign-posts. Those who embrace the Earth establish all of their
right-wrong guidelines around the Earth, and there are sub-divisions
even here, some pointing to some favored species or eco-system, or even
perhaps the universe; for them, what is right and what is wrong is
solely determined by how you treat their pet piece of the Earth.

All of these culture war victories for secularism have had and
are having a profound affect on the general view of truth, and the value
given by men to truth. Today many millions twist and deform the truth,
and they actually believe that they are fully justified in doing so.
Those of us who do not recognize that we are in a culture war are in
snooze mode while our culture deconstructs all around them.

That The Ends Justify The Means is a distinctly Marxist
idea that may be demonstrated to be also dominant in Darwinism and in
Freudianism; thanks to their successful prosecution of the culture war,
it is becoming the dominant norm here.

We know that, once a Socialist is convinced of the “correct” economic
or social or natural viewpoint, lies of omission and commission are
then acceptable, if and only if they support that economic or social or
natural viewpoint. Show me a real Marxist and I’ll show you an
ends-justify-the-means liar.

But, through evolutionary dogma, the hard sciences are similarly
affected. Show me a convinced Darwinist and I’ll show you an
ends-justify-the-means evidence suppresser.

And the soft sciences are similarly affected. Show me a devout
Freudian and I’ll show you an ends-justify-the-means propagandist and
censor.

The easiest way to find evidence of the falsehood of the hard and
soft sciences affected by Marx, Darwin and Freud is to look at the
distinct lack of solid empirical or historical or observable evidence
for the foundational theories themselves. Their response: “Evidence?
What evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence. We’ve got all of
the conventional wisdom and all of the well known facts and all of the general consensus.”

Tell the unmitigated truth, publicly and in bold language in
front of any Marxist, Darwinist or Freudian, and the next sentence out
of their mouths, as they try to hush you and speak privately or not
publicly to you will likely involve how "you don’t even know the damage
you’ve done," by so openly speaking the truth. All secularists have
some agenda that is of greater importance and value to them than the
truth; there are no exceptions that I can find to that statement.

The American media is a perfect study because it is so very
overwhelmingly secular, with a clear majority of unbelievers, a clear
majority favoring Socialism, a clear majority favoring evolutionary
theory and a clear majority embracing Freudianism. As we will see again
and again, the American media almost universally opposes truth,
claiming justification in the socially acceptable mission of promoting
the proper “education” of the masses.

The Conventional Wisdom and the Generally Accepted Facts and the
Recognized Expertise on any subject is promoted and spin-doctored, and
opposing viewpoints are, if not ignored, if treated at all, then
trivialized, marginalized, or just flat out censored.

New morality is introduced to replace the tired, old Christian
morality, because we need some sense of right and wrong. Helping the
whales, saving the rain forests, cutting the human population of China
and India and Africa, de-industrializing America, spending billions to
eliminate non-existent acid rain, legislating global temperatures, safe
fornication, protected sodomy, responsible promiscuity, the right to
choose to abort someone, special rights for sodomites, and more, are all
promoted in a manner that says that the old way, the Christian way, is
no good any more.

It’s as though all of the ancient words opposing sodomy and
fornication and adultery, and telling us how we are to behave, were
never inspired by God and written by man in Holy Scripture. Scripture
itself is directly opposed when it is not trivialized, or even
black-listed and religiously censored, as it is today in our public
schools. Or perhaps I should say their public schools. Even Creation itself is no longer His Creation, but rather, Our Environment.

Or even, Our Precious Resources.

Culture war? What culture war? You can bet that the
SLIMC1
in America today either do not recognize this as a culture war at all, or, they view it as one in which they are the super-hero champions of goodness doing battle with the evil and dangerous Religious Right Wing.

In point of fact, among America's intellectual elite, the culture war
is over, and they won, long ago. And that's quite a statement, because
there are so many fronts to the Culture war that it's actually a bunch
of wars. There's the moral culture war, the economic organization
culture war, the political culture war; there are even sub-divisions
among those. There are mini- culture wars being fought over
Darwinism, Freudianism and Marxism, all of which led to larger culture
wars on the very nature of our social culture, from the primal social
unit, the family, on up to the nature of the whole of our society.

But the media elite don't even mention a culture war, and the
overwhelming majority of us are largely unaware of any culture war, and
yet, here we are discussing it; some who read these words will even
wonder what I'm talking about.

So - is this a culture war, or not?

Yep; and it's a doozy. Part of it is moral, part of it is
economic, part of it is social, part of it is government organization.
All of which overlap.

For instance, let's look at the economic culture war,
which, necessarily, forces us to look at the form-of-government culture
war. The reason I say that is the current economic contention here is
between Capitalism and Socialism, one of which can only exist in the
ABSENCE of government control, and the other can only exist WITH
government control. These competing systems are defined and discussed in
detail within the Catholic American Thinker in the Marxism
page. Here we will just address the affects that they have on our lives
and how we live. First, let's take a look at Capitalism, from the
culture war perspective.

Laissez Faire Free Market Capitalism

This is the system America started with, before the culture
war commenced. Today, it has been estimated that we are some 40%
Socialist, meaning, that 40% of our market and economy is controlled by
largely unrepresentative government regulation, and our government
bureaucracy is therefore that much larger, and that much power has
migrated from the people to the government.

Free market Capitalism is the economic and social system in which
individuals are free to own the means of production and to maximize
profits, and where an automatic price system determines resource
allocation. The right of the individual to excel, or to improve himself
or his condition is granted, along with all other individual rights, at
the expense of one single individual right: the right to be exactly the
same as everyone else. The balance between the mutually exclusive
ideals of individual liberty and total equality always favors individual
liberty at the expense of total equality.

Capitalism requires open markets and free competition, which cannot
exist without some degree of individual liberty, and operates at its
best in the absence of government intervention in the affairs of men and
their business. Although Capitalism exists under some monarchies,
dictatorships and military juntas, it flourishes best in combination
with true majoritarian Democracy, and nowhere so well as in the United
States, where Jeffersonian Democracy has historically sought to expand
individual rights and to grant, not total equality, but equal
opportunity, equal rights and equal legal protections to all citizens
under the civil law. We are all equal under the law, and we consider
ourselves to be a nation of laws and not just of men. The opposite
position in the culture war would have not merely equality before the
law, but equality of outcome, meaning housing, wealth, clothing and so forth.

The rule of subsidiarity, whose two main precepts are that
everyone who is affected by an issue should be in the jurisdiction
responsible for it, and that as few people as possible who are not
affected by an issue should have jurisdiction or responsibility over it,
says that all political authority should be vested in the most local
jurisdiction possible. Problems affecting only a town should be handled
by that town, county problems by that county, etc., and problems that
can be handled by any part of the private sector should not be given
over to any level of government at all. The opposing position in the
culture war has the top level of government in charge of all aspect of
economic, political and social life.

People should be given, or rather, allowed to assume, as much
responsibility as they are willing and able to assume. The ideal
situation under Capitalism and majoritarian Jeffersonian Democracy
follows:

An individual citizen takes care of himself and his family.

He farms, or finds work, or starts a business, as he wills.

He pays his way, feeds, clothes, shelters and insures security to
his family and educates his children to the best of his ability.

When he encounters hardship to great to bear, whether draught,
business failure, unemployment, accident or other disaster, he first
seeks help from his family, friends and church; then charitable
organizations, individuals and businesses.

If he is still in need, he then goes to the township, and, if
still lacking relief, moves his request up the hierarchy of county,
state, and finally the federal government for relief.

The federal government should be the last place to go for any such relief, not the first.

Barring any such calamity, if the man is wise, frugal and not
given to excess, he should be able in his lifetime to provide both for a
comfortable retirement, and to leave his children at least as much, if
not more, of an inheritance as his father left to him.

If, for whatever reason, his retirement is not provided for, then
the same hierarchy should be traversed - family, friends, church, etc.,
again, with the federal government as an absolute last resort.

He should be willing and even anxious to take care of his parents
and grand-parents in their dotage, and in a like manner his own
children and grand-children should be a blessing to him in his old age.

Many from the other side of the culture war call for personal
liberty, or freedom, when what they really want is freedom to not have
to do too much, or risk too much, or be responsible for too much, or
suffer too many “liberty/responsibility” consequences; in other words,
freedom to be lazy, and perhaps even freedom to be somewhat dependant.
But true freedom is not for wimps, nor is it for the lazy; liberty has a
price that is well worth paying at the individual level. Any person,
left alone, will strive to improve his condition as best he can; nearly
all will succeed; if they are left alone they will find a way. History
repeatedly proves it.

Very large numbers of people cannot improve their own condition
without improving their larger environment. The greater the number of
individuals striving for self-improvement, the greater will be the
positive effect that this improvement will have on the entire economy
and the entire society. Social “safety nets” need to exist at the
lowest levels of government for the always very small number of people
who cannot, as opposed to the always larger number of those who will
not, be able to take care of themselves for whatever reason.

People free to improve their own condition are the only source of
the creation of new wealth. Free people improving their own condition
in life are what drive Adam Smith's "invisible hand of Capitalism."
(Wealth Of nations.)

Only free people generate new wealth; governments only spend it.

Now, let's look at the opposition in this part of the culture war.

Socialism

Socialism is an economic and social system under which total
equality of individuals is given preference over individual liberty, and
under which all of the economic means of production, distribution and
exchange are collectively owned. Socialism represents a completely
planned economy, in which state authorities rather than free market
forces directly determine prices, output and production. The most
important features of the planned economy are:

production targets for different segments of the economy,

rationing of certain commodities to determine demand for them,

price and wage fixing by the state, and

a conscripted labor market in which workers are assigned jobs by the state.

The right of the individual to excel, or to improve himself or his condition is denied,
along with all other individual rights, in favor of one single
individual right: the right to be exactly the same as everyone else.
The balance between the mutually exclusive ideals of individual liberty
and total equality always favors total equality at the expense of
individual liberty.

All forms of Socialism, from the most extreme forms of Marxism to
the social-democrat systems of Western Europe, share the belief in the
absolute necessity of collective intervention in, if not complete
control of, all economic and market affairs. "Pure" Socialism cannot
coexist with the honest popular elections of majoritarian Democracy
because no population would ever willingly (or knowingly) vote for the
total loss of individual rights required to achieve pure Socialism; thus
the biggest problem of Socialism is how to select the leadership.

In practice, the Socialist method of selecting leaders has been
by use of force. In pure Socialism, all power is vested in the central
government, and, economically speaking, the government does everything,
and the individual, nothing. This is what the culture war is moving us
toward. The ideal Socialist situation follows:

The government should provide me with an education comparable to that of everyone else.

The government should provide me with housing comparable to everyone else’s housing.

The government should provide all of the food and other necessities of life and make them available in the market place.

The government should provide me with a job, and provide payment
for the job that is equitable and comparable to that of everyone else.

The government should provide me with subsistence payments during
periods of unemployment, and this pay should be comparable to working
wages.

The government should provide me with decent health care.

The government should provide all the tools, factories, raw
materials, farm implements, etc., which are necessary to sustain
society.

The government should provide me with a decent retirement income, comparable to that of everyone else.

The government should provide me with all that I need, from the cradle to the grave.

The government should take care of me and make me feel secure, and not let my world change.

Such a situation is, of course, possible only under the fiercest form
of totalitarianism imaginable, where the central government involves
itself deeply in the most minute and mundane details of the private
affairs of the individual citizen.

Majoritarianism must be replaced by absolute authoritarianism (to
use the Orwellian Newspeak terms favored by America's opposition in
this culture war against them.) Von Mises argued that a planned economy
is not only wasteful, but must ultimately fail because it lacks the
most efficient basis of resource allocation, which is a natural price
system, and it cannot institute a price system without betraying and
destroying its political principle.

On the bright side, since the government is the only employer,
pays all salaries and holds all wealth and property, there are no taxes
to worry about. Only work quotas.

Culture War 2

Here is where the culture war is being most effectively fought by the real enemy: Secularism.

The theist believes in Divinity, the atheist does not, but the
secularist is different from both; all secularists are atheist, but not
all atheists are secularist. Theists and atheists can and do tolerate,
respect and even love each other, but secularists, by definition and by
nature, must always oppose all ideas of God or gods or spirituality or
other-worldliness, which makes secularists intolerant of all believers
and of any viewpoint which is in any way “tainted” by spirituality.

Secularism in general is pro-active in the silent, hidden culture war, and the secular-ist is by definition an activist;
secularism constantly seeks to separate spirituality from everything,
in the interest of promoting a strictly worldly or natural view of
everything. Which reflects the currently popular modern liberal
intellectual position. This is why so many liberal intellectuals and so
many “secular” Jews always seem to be suspicious of the most devout
among us, whether Jew or Christian. (In this connection it is necessary
to note that terms such as “Jew” or “Christian” often pertain more to
Jewish and Christian tradition and/or family or lineage than to faith;
that is the case here. There may be greater numbers of Jews and of
Christians who are secular than those who are devout believers.
Secularism makes inroads wherever it can.)

To me, the term secular Jew makes about as much sense as the term secular Catholic, or secular Baptist.
Nevertheless, there are those in Jewish (and perhaps in Catholic and
Baptist) families who maintain all family traditions while being
atheist/agnostic, and who still consider themselves to be Jewish (or
perhaps Catholic or Baptist). Go figure.

The more actually and openly and publicly our devotion is
expressed the more likely we are to be held in suspicion or contempt or
lower esteem by liberal intellectuals and secular Jews. In the secular
mind the more devout are held to be more threatening, narrow-minded and
even intellectually inferior, and the sole reason, in the complete
absence of evidence, to support that holding is, of course, more
observed open belief in Divinity or in spirits of any kind.
Paradoxically, secular people in general and secular Jews in particular
regularly display great intolerance and great insensitivity toward
devout people in general and devout Christians in particular, even while
preaching to the world about “their” new inclusiveness, tolerance and
sensitivity. (Similarly, they are often blind to the existence of the
culture war.)

But this kind of thinking makes bedfellows of many Jews and the very
worst enemies of both the faith of Judaism and Jewry in general, while
simultaneously alienating and offending the most reliable allies of all
Jews. Throughout history few (if any) people have been persecuted as
repeatedly or as thoroughly as have Jews, and few have been as
successful in life, in surviving, in carving out new niches in
societies, in blending in, and in maintaining their identity. Many
among them, secularists in particular, blame other religions for the
many pogroms and persecutions they have survived, but if we look more
closely at the historical record, particularly within the last century,
we see that their worst enemies were and are less religions than crowns,
and more recently, not religions but the opponents of capitalism, the
worst of whom always happen to be secular.

Irreligion and anti-religion always feeds the vices of jealousy
and envy and covetousness, among others. And Jews, throughout history,
have always been marvelous capitalists. Merchant and business and
finance traditions run in Jewish families for untold generations, and
sooner or later in most free markets, Jews will be preeminent or
dominant in certain markets and niches and industries. There is nothing
wrong with this, as there is nothing wrong with any other tradition or
talent or inherent superior ability.

All of society benefits from the creation of new wealth; the only
people who don’t recognize that fact are those who still think that
“wealth” is not continually changing, growing, shrinking, being created
and being destroyed, but rather see it as some sort of an eternally
fixed and unchanging “pie” in need of being “fairly” divided up or
somehow claimed and redistributed. Marxists, poor dears, have never
understood wealth.

However, inevitable free market success periodically makes Jews
into convenient scapegoats for Marxists, or milder redistributionists,
or the more covetous, or populists seeking a political base, or
combinations of the above. Place an immoral, irreligious, covetous
person with a chip on his shoulder within sight of a rich Jew, legally
and educationally and publicly promote secularism, and then just watch
what eventually happens.

The most devout among us are certainly not the enemies of the
Jews, but their allies; the most serious enemy of the Jews is, always,
opposition to capitalism, covetousness, and the lower morals that always
go hand in hand with irreligion, which, whenever allowed to do so,
always grows into barbaric ruthlessness, political and otherwise. The
worst enemy of the Jews is the worst enemy of all of us: secularism; the
most intolerant of all belief systems. It wasn't Western Culture
morality that brought about Hitler's holocaust, but open repudiation of it and direct opposition to it.

"Christianity is the worst thing that ever happened to mankind. It is the tool of the Bolshevik and the spawn of the Jew." Adolph Hitler

Secularism does great damage to society due to two simple facts. First, monotheistic faith and monotheistic morality
may not be divided from each other. To weaken monotheistic faith is to
weaken the foundational basis for morality as we all know it. Second, Marxism
and secularism may not be divided from each other. Secularism must
always attack spiritual faith, and Marxism must always attack
monotheistic morality. Marxist principles aimed at achieving social
utopia at all costs, such as the dreamed-of ends, always seen as noble,
always justifying the means, however horrible, as applied in Red China,
the old Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, fly in the face of the world’s
most widely recognized and successful and entrenched morality.

But the enemy in the culture war does not clearly state his
position or intention or direction; indeed the culture war is not
recognized as a culture war.

Marxism and secularism are joined at the hip and inseparable.
Marxism, the mortal enemy of capitalism, may not peacefully coexist with
monotheistic morality, and secularism, the mortal enemy of spirituality
in general and religious orthodoxy in particular, may not peacefully
coexist with any theistic faith at all. There you have it. Still, a
very significant number of Jews and people who claim to hold to some
faith consider themselves to be Socialist. So do a lot of Christians.
Go figure.

The popular secular argument says that religion is an intensely
personal thing, and must be kept strictly personal; and that’s true
enough, because religion is indeed a very personal thing. But religion
is also a very social and public thing. Religion may be found at the
root of nearly all tradition, and any tradition that would not die if
the religious roots of it were cut is very rare. You would be hard
pressed to find an ethnic tradition that is not heavily intertwined with
and dependent upon religion. The culture war could undo that.

The family, the primal, elementary social unit, is always, in the
most successful examples, associated with great family traditions, and
the long family traditions of all successful families are also heavily
intertwined with religious tradition. Which may explain the generally
negative attitude of Left-liberalism toward tradition in general and
families in particular, and how Hillary and friends conclude that your
children shouldn’t be considered to belong to you, their parents, but
rather to a new utopian “global village” or something. Guess which side
of the culture war the Democratic Party is on.

A surprising number of people who hold, or appear to hold, or claim
to hold a faith of some kind have already been somewhat secularized by
the hidden culture war. The Christians and Jews who don’t always, but
sometimes, observe the Lord’s Day or the Sabbath, the “devotees” only
occasionally seen on the fringe of the religious gathering or service,
or in the farthest back pews, or only making an appearance at weddings
and funerals and Christenings. Some of them are even fairly regular at
services; nevertheless they are, for the most part, lukewarm weak
believers or closet atheists who do not necessarily see themselves as secularist at all, and perhaps they are not, yet. There is a step that must be taken between having become secular and becoming secularist. They are, at least, secular, although they might still go through some of the religious motions.

But, when they go back to the house, or to the office, or to the
factory, or to the laboratory, or to the microphone, or into the
spotlight, they carefully, studiously, put all matters religious aside
and assume a strictly secular posture, which will be maintained until
the next “religious” occasion. Faith is driven out of almost their
entire lives; they will keep up appearances and set a good example for
the kids; they seem to understand the value of the underpinnings of
morality, and so they pay lip-service and go with the religious flow.
Their sense of religious tradition and their sense of family tradition
are in all likelihood very weak if alive at all.

Many do not even realize they have not only lost their own
personal culture war but they have very smoothly been recruited to the
other side, even as they still go through the religious motions.

Faith is a sometimes kind of thing, reserved for religious
occasions and times and places only. Discussing and even thinking about
religion is very strictly reserved by many for one time, Sunday, one
place, Church, and one subject, the subject of religion itself. There
is no other time or place or subject within which religion should not be
put aside and very strictly avoided; it’s almost at though it were
dirty and might taint anything else it might touch. It isn’t a
conscious thing today; that’s the way it is. For the most part,
semi-secular people do not consider themselves to be secular, because
they do not attack or oppose faith, at least openly, at least
consciously.

However, when upwards of 90% or more of their non-sleeping time is
spent actively avoiding any personal religious reference, and raising
their eyebrows at any religious references made by others, they are
certainly more secular than not. Secularism is against the religion of
everyone who has a religion. Period.

Secularism is not neutral; it is just "hidden" and smooth. I'm
telling you, if you don't know that you're in a culture war right now,
the chances are pretty good that you have already lost your personal
culture war, you've been secularized to some degree, and you're already
quietly waging culture war against the rest of us.

In the truly literal sense, it is not possible to be
simultaneously a believer and secular; yet there are many millions of
kind-of sort-of semi-secular people everywhere, who do not think of
themselves as being secular at all, in the true sense of the word,
mainly because they have never given much or any thought to the subject.
That is the danger and the unique nature of secularism and it's hidden
way of waging this culture war. It is a very unobtrusive, very
effective, very sneaky form of an atheist Evangelization and recruitment
program. And Elementary Secularism 201 is the prerequisite for Principles of Socialism 101.

The committed unrepentant sinner is always a ripe candidate for
secularism, because he already tends to unconsciously favor such
negative thoughts as, away with God, and, would that there were no God;
thus the ranks of secularism are swelled by those who don’t think
enough, the fundamentally immoral, as well as from those who think far
too much, the pseudo-intellectuals.

To effectively fight the culture war, we must be awake to it and
see, hear and recognize the subtle secular signals given off by family,
friends, co-workers, whoever. And engage secularism, immediately, as
nicely but firmly as we can. Drag it out into the open and speak openly
about it.

The culture war seeks to quietly change us and make us like them, without our knowing it. Learn and remember the differences.

There are clear differences in how we live our lives. Devout theists
are not in a particular hurry to live it, or to “grab for the gusto,”
or to hurry up and “enjoy it while they can.” They have another goal,
and they see other things as more important. Theists concentrate more
on the end of life. Atheists devote as little time as possible to
contemplating the end of life, and they build ulcers and heart
conditions working feverishly to enjoy life while they still can; you
only go around once, you know. It would appear that the lines are well
drawn for the culture war. The implications to our general morality are
obvious.

None of us are perfect, and probably there are few pure
secularists and few pure devout worshipers, but we can all see that
secularism leads to a less moral lifestyle, and a less moral lifestyle
is always less healthy, in more ways than spiritual. The important
thing is this: sooner or later the immoral man will seek unfair
advantage over his neighbor. While we may properly be more concerned
about the next life than this one, our neighbor’s problem is, to some
degree, our problem, those within our providence deserve our protection,
and we, individually, have every right to expect to live our lives in
peace and normalcy, and to expect that there actually be such a thing as
normalcy.

We have moral goals to fight for in the culture war. There can be
no more holocausts. There can be no more slavery. There can be no
more religious or ethnic or political oppression. We cannot afford the
risk of unrepresentative or even less representative government. And,
arguably most important of all, we cannot afford to allow objective
truth to be deformed, denied or hidden.

This culture war, this direct confrontation and clash between
theism and secularism, is today, in America, actually Westernism versus
Secularism, and, as I have said elsewhere, Westernism equals
Judeo-Christianity, even though the differences between Judaic and
Christian culture are clear enough for anyone to see. Western Culture,
i.e., American Culture, primarily, eats pork, and has no ritual
involving circumcision, and so forth. Many of the details of the
“Mosaic Law” involving dietary restrictions, circumcision and the like
were loosened for the non-Jews to whom the Jews Peter and Paul carried
the Gospel of Christ, as we see in Acts 10 and in Acts 15. We worship
and break bread on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the day He rose, as opposed
to the Sabbath, Saturday, as we see in Colossians 2:16, Acts 20:7, and
in 1 Corinthians 16:2, and in Revelation 1:10.

We do not divorce and remarry, as Jesus raised the marriage covenant
to the level of a sacrament, saying, What therefore God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder in Mark 10:9. Marrying after divorce,
or marrying a divorced person while the divorced spouse lives, was made
adultery, as we see in Matthew 19:9, Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18, and in
Romans 7:2-3.

Now on this particular point, there is another seam in Western
culture, since the Reformation, when Luther introduced divorce into the
new Protestantism, back during THAT culture war; there will be much more
about that later. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:32, “But I say to you, that
whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of
fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her
that is put away, committeth adultery.” The word used is fornication,
and there is, of course, a difference between fornication and adultery.
The first is a sin committed before marriage, and the second is a sin
committed afterward.

If a new wife (or husband) was discovered after marriage to be
“unclean,” then she lied, and there was no true marriage in the first
place. A contract based upon a lie is no contract. The very terms of
the marriage covenant involved a state of sexual purity. It’s the same
in Matthew 19:9: “And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his
wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth
adultery.” Two times He said it. Do not pretend that our Lord did not
know the difference between fornication and adultery.

In those days, fornication could terminate a marriage, but
adultery was punishable not by divorce, but by death. So if the man put
her away for adultery, she would be stoned, and she would have no
opportunity to marry again.

This is a very important point that needs attention. Today, in
civil law, we do not kill adulterers. But if we ultimately divorce an
adulterer, if the matter cannot be reconciled in any other way, then we
accept it and we do no remarry.

There are several places where we see positive physical ramifications stemming from adherence to spiritual laws.

The positive side of “no divorce and remarriage” is strong families,
which make strong societies. Increasingly easy divorce has, without
question, damaged our society and caused it to morally bleed. And the
Protestants are not the only ones on the divorce side of the line
(indeed many denominations do not allow it;) many Catholic bishops and
dioceses are well known in Catholic circles to be the ones to go to if
you want an easy “annulment,” which is to say, the new scandal called
“Catholic divorce.” Annulment is a declaration of nullity, which says
there was no valid marriage to begin with, and is supposed to be
reserved for extremely unusual circumstances, and therefore quite rare;
but in some dioceses, it is quite common. Indicating that clerics, too,
fall victim to the culture war.

No organization of men may ever be expected to be perfect, and
today, as always, bishops may be found who are at odds with Rome. (In my
opinion the culture war has made serious inroads among America's
bishops.) But note well that it was not the Church of Rome that brought
into our Western culture common, simple, easy divorce. I must concede
that the Catholic view is the minority Western view here, since
Catholics make up only about 24 percent of the Christian American
population, and are outnumbered by the Protestants, in all their
diversity, by slightly better than three to one. But I will not concede
the moral point. Still, in all of Christendom world-wide, Catholicism
represents half the population, but in America, only a quarter.

As I said, divorce and remarriage marks a seam in Western
civilization since the Reformation. Some of us think that no-fault
divorce is quite moral, some of us cannot tolerate divorce at all,
except in the most abusive or unusual circumstances, and even then
cannot condone remarriage. This divorce issue, this cultural seam, is
the beginning point for any and all moral differences between the
Protestant and the Catholic subcultures that coexist together within
the larger Western culture itself.

We are talking about moral differences here, not theological or
liturgical differences, which should not be touched by civil law or
political action anyway. These are issues addressed by the last seven
Commandments (in the Jewish and Catholic counting; the last six in the
Protestant counting) which address man’s relationship with his fellow
man. This single, moral, culture war issue, with its heavy
ramifications touching the family unit, is the key knot from which it is
possible to completely unravel our entire morality and eventually
destroy our entire culture. We could potentially loose the culture war
over divorce and remarriage.

Easy divorce and remarriage is the point in the culture war at
which we must become politically aware and active, and use every
persuasion and tool at our disposal to make the larger society look very
closely at it, and recognize it for what it is.

The culture war is waged against Catholics, Protestants and Jews
alike. Although there are these "seams" between us, overall, we are all
of the "Western" moral standard and we need to stand together as much as
we can. Any reasonable Protestant and any reasonable Jew ought to see
the rapid, incredible damage already done to marriage, family and
tradition by such things as easy divorce, contraception, abortion, and
so forth. If we are not to totally loose the culture war, then we need,
together, to at the very LEAST, resist further easing of divorce
restrictions, and perhaps do some rebuilding of the sense of commitment
and responsibility involved in marriage. The culture war seeks
destruction of ALL Western culture.

The culture war is morally choking us all. We, in our majority,
seem to want actually to be, and to be recognized as, a Christian
culture, but a Christian culture that does not want to give up its
relatively new attachment to easy divorce. We are a Christian culture,
but a Christian culture that wants to keep its even much newer
attachment to easy “birth control.” We see ourselves as a Christian
culture, but one with lots and lots of “Christians” who are unwilling to
give up an easy “escape” path represented by some limited allowance for
legal abortion on demand. All of which point up the ease with which
vice, over time, becomes unrecognizable as vice, and how a sense of
personal sacrifice is lost.

I submit that any man, however poor or rich, who cannot
personally sacrifice for his own children is unlikely to sacrifice for
his own spouse, and any man who cannot sacrifice for his own spouse is
extremely unlikely to make any sacrifice for his nation, or for anything
other than his own self interest.

As the primal social unit goes so goes the larger society. If the
current trend continues, we loose the culture war. Clear vice is now
widely seen as social responsibility.

(What? Pregnant again? Haven’t you two heard about birth
control? Isn’t it about time you started planning these things and
being more responsible?)

We are a Christian culture that makes easy compromises with the
world, pure and simple, and the compromises are not only addictive, but
they always lead to more compromises, and our own history proves that
this situation only gets worse over time, not better. Birth control and
choice are such easier and softer terms than human control and Nazi
eugenics, but the actual nature and reality of these vices has never
changed. Not once. Only our view of them has changed. The evidence
shows that the real culture war has been going on for some time, and
we're loosing.

Marriage is now so cheapened that hobbies or careers are seen as
equally or more important, as any week your local paper is likely to
showcase a wedding on motorcycles, or while sky diving, or while scuba
diving, or while bowling, or whatever. Changing demographics of inner
city dwellers drives the point home as we see that the fastest growing
“family type” is the single parent family, consisting of an unattached
and unwed mother living on welfare with her several bastard children.

“Unattached” young and not so young men in a continual state of
arrested adolescence repeatedly proving their manhood by shacking up
with various women and making lots of babies. Some of them regularly go
to church.

Frequently the “family” many slum and inner city young people are
most solidly attached to is, if not a gang, then a gang-like gaggle or
loose confederation of like-minded individuals. Young women, sometimes
alone and sometimes in groups, who visit women’s health clinics and
crisis pregnancy centers regularly, sometimes even monthly, for free
pregnancy tests, with multiple bastards in tow, all from different
fathers, and who will respond with a straight face, if asked, that yes,
they do have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And we see that situation as good, because at least she’s seeking
help at a pro-life place rather than at an abortuary. But the only
reason might be that such health care is always free while abortion
clinics always cost money. (Social planners of other people’s lives
never contribute their personal time or talent or resources, or
anything, for free, because, you see, that’s what redistributionism is for.)

This promiscuous behavior is not restricted to any “lower class.”
Young engaged people nowadays are as likely as not to “move in
together” before the wedding, which will still be in a church, or which
might be called off, depending on which way the wind blows, and either
way it’s no big deal.

As long as birth control is available, as long as they’re responsible
about it, what’s the difference? Fornication? What’s that? That’s
not a word in much use today, as singles shacking up see their sexual
activities and behavior as adult, and responsible, and non-exploitive. Who does it hurt?

The culture war is a real war like any other. It's a war of ideas
and moral norms more than a war of blood; but make no mistake about it,
the culture war is a real war with a more insidious destructive
capability than any military war. The culture war can destroy peoples,
nations and even civilization itself. It is waged in the military
ranks, in the civilian population and among clerics, all at the same
time. No one is unaffected; no one is not at risk.

Once there was one single Gospel message, one single teaching
authority, and all of Western culture immediately recognized immorality
as immorality. Since the Reformation there are multiple Gospel messages
and multiple authorities, and immorality is not so easily
distinguished. There are many Protestant denominations that are
“Catholic” and orthodox to the degree that, if we were un-blindfolded in
one of their churches during their liturgy, most of us would have some
difficulty recognizing that we were in something other than a Roman
Catholic Church.

The moral teaching of these denominations is, to most laymen,
virtually indistinguishable from our own. But they, and we, still
represent a minority, here in America. And each of these churches, and
our own, have also had their own rifts and schisms and liberalizations
and some degree of secularization from within. There are culture wars
within culture wars.

What we are left with is some percentage, hopefully half, of the
“orthodox” churches who still clearly differentiate old fashioned right
from wrong. Scattered among the softer denominations are still clearly
moralistic islands. The rest of us, the majority of us, still know
right from wrong, but we’ve gotten used to skating, and sliding, and
easing past the rules. Note well that the original Gospel has never
changed; not once. Through culture war after culture war after culture
war.

It's time for us all to turn back to our faith. It's time to become more of a thinking Jew, or a thinking Catholic, or a thinking Protestant. Because, this culture war goes on right now, with active antagonists on both sides.

How about you? Are you in it, or are you on the sidelines? Look
at your family. Look at your church. Look at your nation. The culture
war is on, the enemy on the move, the battle is hot and the outcome is
in serious question.

Turn to your traditional faith. And pick up your sword.

Read the Catechism, in detail, line by line. There is nothing in it that will hurt you.

Do your part in the culture war.

=====

Sarcastic Acronym Hover-Link Footnotes: For the convenience of those readers using devices that lack a mouse, these footnotes are provided for all webpages, in case any webpage contains any hover-links. (If you don't have a mouse, you can't "hover" it over a link without clicking just to see the simple acronym interpretation. Click a footnote link to see the gory details.)

Comments

Changes pursuant to changing the website URL
and name from
Thinking Catholic Strategic
Center to
Catholic American Thinker.

Pulled the trigger on the 301 MOVE IT option
June 1, 2014. Working my way through all the webpages. .

Regards,

Vic

Language and Tone Statement

Please note the language and tone of this monitored Website. This is not the place to just stack up vulgar
one-liners and crude rejoinders. While you may support, oppose or
introduce any position or argument, submissions must meet our high Roman Catholic and Constitutional American standards of Truth, logical rigor and civil discourse. We will not
participate in merely trading insults, nor will we tolerate participants merely
trading insults. Participants should not be
thin-skinned or over sensitive to criticism, but should be prepared to
defend their arguments when challenged. If you don’t really have a
coherent argument or counter-argument of your own, sit down and don’t
embarrass yourself. Nonsensical, obscene, blindly & doggedly anti-Catholic, anti-American, immoral or merely insulting submissions will
not be published here. If you have something serious to contribute to
the conversation, be prepared to back it up, keep it clean, keep it civil, and it will be published. We humbly
apologize to all religious conservative thinkers for the need to even say
these things, but the Hard Left is what it always was, the New Leftist Liberals are what they are, and the Internet is what it is.

"Clickbait" advertising links are not acceptable for posting here.

If you fear intolerant Leftist repercussions, do not use your real name and do not include email or any identifying information. Elitist Culturally Marxist Pure Authoritarians cannot and will not tolerate your freedom of speech or any opposition to their rigid authoritarian, anti-equality, anti-life, anti-liberty, anti-property, hedonistic, anti-Constitution, pro-Marxist, pro-Islam, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-male, sexist, pro-homosexual, anti-heterosexual, anti-white, racist, anti-Western, anti-American, Globalist, anti-Nation, blatantly immoral, totally intolerant and bigoted point of view.

This Form cannot be submitted until the missing fields (labelled below in red) have been filled in

ADD COMMENT

Please note that all fields followed by an asterisk must be filled in.

Silence in the face of evil is speaking. "We've had enough of exhortations to be silent!
Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten
because of silence." Saint Catherine of Siena

“An
error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is
suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of
secret complicity.” – Pope Felix III

“Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creatures.
What you are in God's sight is what you are and nothing more”—Justice Clarence Thomas

"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil-in any sin at all-and who thus rejects redemption." Pope Saint John Paul the GreatDOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM

"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men-when we can do it-is no less a sin than to encourage them." Pope St. Felix III

If a purposeful violator of the Constitution who is a sworn officer of the governemt is not a domestic enemy of America and a traitor, then
there is no such thing, and the Constitution itself is without meaning,
and America has lost its grounding and its very purpose for being. Anti-American-Court

Live Interviews

"All the evils of the world are due to lukewarm Catholics." Pope Pius V

"All the strength of Satan's reign is due to the easygoing weakness of Catholics." Pope St. Pius X

Click the image above topublish your essay or article here,to be included among those below.

Submitted Articles andReprinted Articles

(Note: copyrights on these articles wherever present will supersede the WebSite copyright at the bottom footer of every WebPage)

Still Time To Get It Right. “Once you understand the role of energy in everything, you can begin to appreciate why there's simply nothing more important to get right. Energy is at the root of everything. If you have sufficient energy, anything is possible. But without it, everything grinds to a halt.” Chris Martenson

The Heresy of Chrislam. Those claiming that the “Allah” of Islam’s Qu’ran and Yahweh or God of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are one and the same are missing one glaring point: GOD NEVER CONTRADICTS HIMSELF.

Never be lukewarm.Life itself demands passion.He who is indifferent to God has already forfeited his soul.He who is indifferent to politics has already forfeited his liberty.In America, religion is not mere window dressing and citizenship is not a spectator sport.Do not allow our common destiny as a whole people to just happen without your input. Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life; please God, and live forever.

NewsletterCatholic American ThinkerFree E-zine Subscription

Email

You will receive immediate email newsletters with links to new articles as they are published here. Your email is perfectly secure here; we use it only to send you theCatholic American ThinkerNewsletterand absolutely nothing else.

The Purpose of this grouping of articles is to give evidence to the original and enduring Christian nature of the nation, and the Judeo-Christian moral code upon which it depends for its very life.

American Peoplehood PagesThe American citizenry is made up of individual independent operators with the liberty to take care of themselves and their families, prosper by their own industry, worship as they please, whose representative government derives its powers only by their consent, and who maintain the ability to alter or abolish their own government. We are the sovereign citizens of America.

"We belong to the Church militant; and She is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass Her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights.”--Pope Pius XII

"It is not lawful to take the things of others to give to the poor. It is a sin worthy of punishment, not an act deserving a reward, to give away what belongs to others."--St. Francis of Assisi

Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance
may deride it, but in the end, there it is.—Winston
Churchill

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who
deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.—Ayn Rand

Atheist Genesis:

In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing.
And then nothing accidentally exploded and created everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally encountered other bits of everything and formed some new kinds of everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into self-replicating bits of everything.
And then some self-replicating bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into dinosaurs.
See?

“ … for I have sworn upon
the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind
of man.” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush in
the year of our Lord 1800. The context
involved resistance to any form of Christianity or Deism legally imposing
itself throughout the USA. We must wonder what he might say
about our current government's forced imposition of strict secularism – i.e.,
anti-theism – throughout the USA. I submit that legally enforced secularism of society, like theocracy, like Marxism,
and like Islam, is, precisely, a form of tyranny over the mind of man.Nothing good can come from the religious cleansing of Judaeo-Christian society. Government imposed secularism is just another form of theocracy.